Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #7 of Revelation, chapter 18, and we are going to read Revelation 18:2-3:

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

I will stop reading there.  We have seen how Babylon has become a “prison” for the unsaved or “unclean” of the world.  God speaks of casting them into prison in order to exact payment from His adversaries; this is exactly what God did when He shut the door of heaven on the world on May 21, 2011.  He turned the entire world into a prison house in which He would punish the unsaved inhabitants and exact payment for their sin because they had no Saviour.  Therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ had not paid for their sins from the foundation of the world and, yet, payment must be made to the uttermost farthing. 

It appears that God has laid out a 10,000-day period in which to collect the payment for sin.  The wages of sin is death, so when the Lord shut the door of heaven, He brought the world into the condition of death or “hell.”

It is interesting that in Isaiah, chapter 24, God describes the judgment on this world and He says, for instance, in Isaiah 24:17:

Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.

Then it says in Isaiah 24:19-20-22:

The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again. And it shall come to pass in that day, that JEHOVAH shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited.

Here is matching language to Revelation 18.  Babylon, the kingdom of Satan or the kingdoms of this world has become a “prison” for every unclean spirit and a “prison” for every unclean and hateful bird.  Both of these phrases point to the unsaved people that are in Satan’s kingdom of darkness and the world has become a prison.  They have been “gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison.”  God shut the door of heaven.  In so doing, He protected His people that are within, spiritually, and He shut out the rest of mankind that were without.  This is what we read in Revelation 22:14-15:

Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

Without, or outside, is everyone that is unsaved at this point.  That is why God refers in a few places to “outer darkness.”  Outside the city of Zion or outside of “heavenly Jerusalem,” which consists of everyone God has saved, there is “outer darkness.”  That is where all the unsaved people are located and God is punishing them through this darkness, because He is the one that put out the light of the sun, moon and stars, spiritually, and made this world a dark prison house in which the unsaved people are being punished as prisoners in a pit in the condition of “hell.”  Death and “hell” are synonymous and God has brought the world, for all intents and purposes, into the condition of death, once He shut the door of heaven.

Remember we saw language in Isaiah 13 and Isaiah 34 that dealt with JEHOVAH’S wrath and details about a desolate land with “unclean” birds.  You know, the Bible is an amazing Book.  People read these kinds of things and they have read it ever since the Bible was first written and it made the Bible difficult or even impossible to understand.  For instance, God says in Isaiah 13:11, “And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity.”  Then He would start talking about the Medes and the Persians coming against the Babylonians.  How does that connect?  They must have wondered.  It is only now in our day that we understand these spiritual types and figures.  We understand that Babylon is a picture of this world and Babylon was victorious during the Great Tribulation.  Immediately following the seventy years, historically, the Medes and the Persians conquered Babylon.  Likewise, immediately following the Tribulation, Christ conquered the kingdom of Satan, and so forth.  Not only is Isaiah, chapter 13 difficult due to its switching back and forth between discussions of Babylon and to the end of the world and the final judgment of mankind, but it is difficult in its conclusion, as it says of Babylon in Isaiah 13:19-22:

And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

So to make it even more difficult, God suddenly speaks of a desolate Babylon that is inhabited by dragons and owls and doleful creatures.  It is only when we recognize that at this point it is because Babylon is a picture of the world that has become a prison house for every unclean spirit and every unclean and hateful bird.  Unclean spirits point to unclean men as do unclean birds,  as God speaks of unclean animals in Leviticus, chapter 11, or as when the Apostle Peter was shown the sheet of unclean animals (including unclean birds) and Peter was told to “Rise, Peter…and eat.”  Then God explained to Peter he was not to call any man “unclean” and it had to do with the Gentiles, the people of the world.  So Babylon has now become a prison for every inhabitant of the world, in the sense that they have never been translated out of Satan’s kingdom through salvation and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son – they are all in “prison.” 

Just to confirm this even more, let us go to Jeremiah 50:35:

A sword is upon the Chaldeans, saith JEHOVAH, and upon the inhabitants of Babylon…

Then it says in Jeremiah 50:38-40:

A drought is upon her waters; and they shall be dried up: for it is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols. Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wild beasts of the islands shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein: and it shall be no more inhabited for ever; neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation. As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbour cities thereof, saith JEHOVAH; so shall no man abide there, neither shall any son of man dwell therein.

Again, when God speaks of making a land “desolate, without inhabitant,” the inhabitant He has in mind is Christ.  This is why it says in Jeremiah 50:40:

… so shall no man abide there, neither shall any son of man dwell therein.

This is because Jesus has the name “Son of man.”  Again, and again, as we read the Gospel accounts, we read things like “The Son of man must suffer many things,” as Jesus was prepared to go to the cross.  When God has ended His salvation program and He is no longer evangelizing the earth, it is as though the “Son of man” has departed from Babylon, the kingdoms of this world, and He made this world a “desolate land” and no man (Christ) shall abide there, neither shall any son of man (Christ) dwell therein.  We still have a world populated with people, so it is not desolate in that sense, but it is desolate in the most important sense: God has left the world, as far as salvation is concerned.  He will not return to save anyone, ever again, and this is why Babylon has become a “prison.” 

Let us just take a quick look at that statement again in Matthew 5, where God speaks of sin being paid for in “prison.”  It says in Matthew 5:25-26:

Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

Payment for sin must be completed.  If a man is able, he can make payment just as Jesus did from the foundation of the world.  Christ made payment in full for the sins of all His elect people, the great multitude which, perhaps, numbered 200 million.  Jesus died for every one of them and God’s Law was satisfied because He was the perfect sacrifice and He was also eternal God, which qualified Him to pay for the sins of His people.  But, for the rest of mankind for whom He did not die and whose sins remain upon them, they must make the payment for sin and that payment is death.  In that official Day of Judgment, that payment is carried out over the course of the prolonged period of judgment upon the world.  Finally, each individual will be annihilated and utterly destroyed.  Christ was slain by God at the point of the world’s foundation and, yet, being God, He was able to come through death and rise from the dead to live again and justify all those for whom He died.  All their sin is removed and the debt is paid.  God does not allow “double jeopardy” and no one can be charged a second time for sin.  Christ did not have to die twice for sin, so He was not making payment for sin in 33 AD and the individuals Christ died for also do not have to pay for their own sins because it was already paid for by Him and they are set free to live for evermore; they have been given eternal life.  No sin they could ever commit can take that away because any sin they would commit in their lifetime has already been forgiven in Christ. 

But, for the billions of people that were not predestinated unto salvation and whose sins were not laid upon Christ, their sins remain upon them and God is punishing them.  If somehow they managed to die and come back to life as Christ had done, they would also live forever.  They could say, “I paid for my sins.  I died and now I live and I will enter into heaven.”  But, of course, there is an insurmountable problem with that and that is that they are “mere men.”  They are creatures and not the Creator.  They are finite and not infinite in their being.  They are weak and they do not possess the power to overcome death, as God says in Ecclesiastes 8:8:

There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it.

The Bible declares this truth and we know it.  Man, in his weakness and the fact that he is just a creature means that when the full force of God’s wrath comes down upon him and God’s Law declares he must die for his sin, man has no power in the day of his death.  He cannot retain his spirit and he cannot rise from his dead condition.  He remains dead and he is no more, nor will he ever be again.  This is why it is a final judgment and final destruction and annihilation of the sinner because he lacks the power of Christ to overcome death. 

This is one of the wonderful and glorious things about the resurrection and why Easter is such an incredibly wonderful time to recognize the great power of God.  He had the strength to overcome death itself and to be victorious over death.  It is not a little thing to die and then to come back to life and rise again from the dead.  It is a testimony to the infinite nature of God’s power.  We can only thank God and glorify Him and praise Him that He was able to do this.  Can you imagine if He did not have that power to overcome death?  We would have no Saviour and we would still be in our sins and we would have to die for our own sins.  But He does have that power and that is another reason why the child of God insists (because the Bible insists) that our Saviour is JEHOVAH and Christ is Eternal God.  Who else could possess the power to die for the sins of so many and to conquer death and to be triumphant over death itself?  Men certainly do not have that kind of power.  Prophets do not have that kind of power.  Angelic beings do not have that kind of power.  Only Eternal God possesses the power to overcome death.

We will stop here.  Lord willing, in our next study we will pick up in Revelation 18 and we will go on to verse 3.